Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

The elimination of the indirect association couplets
and the acceptance of the remainders as fair portrayals
of the influence of objects and movements on recall
is therefore a much nearer approach to truth than
would be the retention of the indirectly associated
couplets.

The following conclusions deal with recall after two
days only. The recall after longer intervals
will be discussed after Table III.

The summary from Tables I. and II. shows that when
objects and nouns are coupled each with a foreign
symbol, four of the six subjects recall real objects
better than images of objects, while two, M
and Ho, show little or no preference.
The summary also shows that when body movements and
verbs are coupled each with a foreign symbol, five
of the six subjects recall actual movements better
than images of movements, while one subject, M,
shows no preference. The same subject also showed
no preference for objects. With the subjects S
and B the preference for actual movements is
not marked, and has importance only in the light of
later experiments to be reported.

The great difference in the retentive power of different
subjects is, as we should expect, very evident.
Roughly, they may be divided into two groups. M
and Mo recall much more than the other four.
The small percentage of recall in the case of these
four suggested the next change in the conditions of
experimentation, namely, to shorten with them the
intervals between the tests for permanence. This
was accordingly done in the C set. But
before giving an account of the next set we may supplement
these results by results obtained from other subjects.

It was impossible to repeat this set with the same
subjects, and inconvenient, on account of the scarcity
of suitable words, to devise another set just like
it. Accordingly, the B set was repeated
with six new subjects. We may interpolate the
results here, and then resume our experiments with
the other subjects. The conditions remained the
same as for the other subjects in all respects except
the following. The tests after nine and sixteen
days were omitted, and the remaining test for deferred
recall was given after one day instead of after two.
In learning the series, each series was shown four
times instead of three. The results are summarized
in the following table. The figures in the left
half show the number of words out of sixteen which
were correctly recalled. The figures in parentheses
separate, as before, the correctly recalled indirect-association
couplets. In the right half of the table the
same results, omitting indirect-association couplets,
are given in per cents, to facilitate comparison with
the summary from Tables I. and II.